In the first session I learned about strings and variables and how to display these to the browser using both echo and print.

I also learned how to format textual input into upper or lowercase. Another thing I learned was how to identify a particular character within a string and then dissect the string.

Potential Use: I could use these techniques to provide usernames from user input.

The majority of this lesson was spent learning about arrays. In simple terms they can store lists of information.

I also know how to display what is inside an array. This would normally be done in the debugging process. I also found out that debugging can be a lot more productive if the pre tag is used.

Potential Use: A common use throughout my learning was to store error messages in arrays to be called when an error occurs.

During this session I learned a method of validating inputs which needed to fit very specific format, such as telephone numbers or postcodes.

I used this to write a very basic script to validate UK postal codes.

Potential Use: To validate user inputs.

Here I learned about date and time stamps. A time stamp can then be added to most things to show when something was created or last updated etc.

I also learned how to use them to show the day of the year and also create a correctly formatted date from a 10 digit date stamp.

Potential Use: I plan to use this to create an indication for when items were uploaded and also give the user an indication of the last time they logged in.

During this lesson I learned about how to manage sessions. One way this can be used is to let validated users access specific content.

I learned how to let a person log in and then how to close the session when the browser closes.

Potential Use: The area where the user can upload photographs on the final site will need to be secure and therefore sessions can be used to do this.

In this lesson I learned how to create a simple upload form. This lesson also showed me how to set an upload size limit so the files size are kept managable.

This form also dealt with renaming the uploaded files on the web and placing them in an uploads folder.

Potential Use: This will be used in the secure area to bring the photographs to the space online and then give them meaningful names.

This is when I started sending information to a MySQL database. The first thing I had to learn was to connect to the database using a password and username.

The first sort of information I sent to the database was user input, this was things such as user's details and a time stamp as to when the information was added to the database.

Potential Use: In order to give the user access to the secure area the password can be stored encrypted in a database.

Here I started to look at the retrieval and updating of information from the database I had previously created.

The sort of things I was looking at comparing with the database was making sure the email given agreed with that on file and then checking the password registered against that email before allowing it to be changed by the user input.

Potential Use: I will be using this to obtain various differents pieces of data from the database including passwords, time stamps and a range of other information.